By Andrew Adridge
(opera singer, writer & Co-Founder of Opera InReach)
Ambient, experimental, amorphous, electroacoustic, improvisation, portable ops, Toronto. These are all tags to Dame Cook’s Bandcamp and very real adjectives describing her work and my experience with her music. I am an opera singer with a background in a few different genres both with voice and guitar, but I have had little experience with electronic music outside of what FAWN has introduced me to; this is important, as who I am informs my understanding of what music is. As I once again suspend my own perceptions derived from the constructs of my development, I venture into an art form that, on the surface, doesn’t appear to share many commonalities with the one I am familiar with. Experiencing Dame’s work, however, has inspired an ability to draw more parallels with this art and my own idea of “art” than I ever have been able to. Something that always intrigues me is the idea of the creative process: what inspires the art I am witnessing, what does the creator want me to think listening to their art, and most importantly, how can I continue to relate on a deeper level to the new musical experiences I am having. In Dame’s case, I had the good fortune to foster this deeper connection, not solely through my own understanding but through her’s as well. I chatted with Dame about her work, her process, and revealed that our two worlds may share more commonalities than I had thought.
(photo of Dame Cook by Hollis Bullock)
What inspires creativity for you?
“I find creative inspiration in just about everything I experience. I work a lot with manipulated field recordings and found sound’, so I find myself as inspired by whatever music I’m listening to at the moment or just sounds I’m hearing in everyday life. As it’s been getting warmer, I’ve been listening to and feeling comforted by the sounds of the birds in the yard and have been trying to find ways to incorporate the feeling into what I’m working on. I’m a much more passive responder as a musician, so I like to take in what’s around me as I work on what I want to convey.”
What is your thought process around the reinterpretation of your pieces by those who watch? Do you want something specific to be taken away?
“One of the awesome things I find about ambient/’experimental’ music, in particular, is how amorphous it can be. There’s a sense of space in the sounds that usually leave the listener with more than enough room to make up their own story which I find very freeing. Ultimately, even though i do have ideas and inspiration behind what I’m doing, as long as the listener can find some satisfaction in it on their own terms I think that’s more valuable to me.”
What was the inspiration for ‘Nature Interrupted’ in particular?
“Having been under various degrees of lockdown and in the middle of a pandemic for the past year, the album came as a sort of idealist response to being stuck inside and doomscrolling, being bombarded with disastrous news around the world. I wanted to make something that not only sonically attempted to represent the chaos of these times but left with a sense of hope. There’s a lot of dissonance in the sounds on the album, but also a lot of symmetry. I dream of a world where people live in harmony with each other and with nature, which unfortunately isn’t true currently, but I have hope for our future.”
Did the visuals of the piece exist in your creative pallet prior to the composition of the music? Can you talk a little bit about the visuals in general as well.
“The visuals on the piece were edited by my partner Hollis Bullock under both our direction. I had a vague idea as we started that I wanted to find images that capture the sense of 50s/60s American Idealism, as well as travelogues; portraits of the reckless abandon of capitalism that has caused such damage to the environment. We gathered the visuals from an open source archive that contained just that: old PSAs, travel videos, home and garden exhibitions from the 60s. I think they create a blanket of unease which is at the core of life today for a lot of us.”
When I listen to pieces like this I always try to anchor to things that are sensical to me first but I would love to hear why they are sensical to the person who created the ‘sense’, if you will, for the piece. Tell me about some of the titles that come up in the piece ‘go outside’ ‘no smoking’ ‘sdAC 27’ – what do they mean to you?
“I usually pull titles from something that strikes me on the days that I’m working on the piece. ‘go outside’ was a simple reminder to take a break as I was working on the piece. Titles aren’t necessarily my forte, so they mostly end up being vague associations, or like I mentioned, a phrase I see that day that feels right to me.”
This is a broad question but if I asked you to define ‘music’ in a few words, what would come to mind?
“I find as i’ve gotten older the line between music and sound has become almost nonexistent in my mind. I find just as much satisfaction as listening to the rhythm of cars on the street as I do listening to recorded music. It’s all the same to me; I feel like sound and music are a universal language.”
* * *
“…Sound and music are a universal language;” when I think of my answer to the very questions I posed to Dame I think it would end in something like this as well. Listening again to Dame’s album, I hear the lines between music and sound being blurred, I hear the chaos of our time, the hope for better, and the universality of music. Many themes came up to me personally while listening to Nature Interrupted that align with Dame’s thoughts; the nursery-rhyme-esc quality to ‘upside down/thorns’, the ironic nature of ‘sunshine state’ which to me was the darkest moment of the piece–colours and sounds that evoke the same emotion I would latch on to at a jazz show or at the opera. That, I feel, is the point, no matter the sound or the medium presented, creativity continues to prove that there truly is a universality to music. Whatever way we choose to show it, it is still evident that our creativity is influenced by the world around us, a lot of which, especially made evident in the wake of the pandemic, we share collectively as humanity. Dame showed me that we both speak the same language in different dialects, and that the beauty of music is its ability to evoke something within us that transcends dialect, leaving its interpretation up to the individual mind.
To have your own experience with interpreting Dame’s work make sure to catch her coming album release show, co-presented by FAWN’s Convergence series and the Canadian Music Centre as part of the CMC’s Multilocation Festival at 8PM on July 22, 2021. There you can be interrupted by nature in your own way!
Click here to watch the album release
In lieu of admission fees, FAWN and the CMC invite audience members to make contributions to The AFC and Friends of Ruby.
Learn more and donate here!
About Andrew Adridge
Toronto-born baritone Andrew Adridge is a proud Guyanese Canadian performer and arts administrator known for his commanding stage presence and versatility of vocal ability. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto Opera program where he studied under Wendy Nielsen. He also holds a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from UofT, studying under Peters Barnes. Most recent singing credits include: Stephen Marshall in Nicole Lizée’s No One’s Safe with the Opera in the 21st Century program at Banff Centre, Workshopping and Performing in Soundstreams’ Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállábártnit, singing the role of Schaunard in Puccini/Ivany’s La Bohème in Against the Grain Theatre’s Canada-wide touring production, and a return to the baritone role in Soundstreams’ Electric Messiah.
Andrew’s passion for the artform extends beyond performing. He is an avid writer having contributed to both Opera Canada and Ludwig Van Toronto and continues his pursuits through his personal blog and through spoken word bringing to light issues around artistry, identity, and race. He was a member of the Portfolio Artist Collective with the Association of Opera in Canada as the Operations Associate, which is the representative body for opera in Canada, currently works for Tapestry Opera as the Advancement Associate and also is the Co-Founder of Opera InReach, an initiative aimed at examining the civic impact of opera, creating an authentic Canadian identity for it, and engaging the next generation with equitable and diverse digital programming and mentorship.